We are pleased that Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. has assembled a strong team of well-known professionals and community leaders to serve on a new Kingsbridge Armory Task Force.

We hope they can quickly come up with some creative ideas that break the tiresome mold of cookie-cutter malls that don’t offer the community anything it really needs and do little to lift workers into even the working class.

A tremendous public resource like the Armory should fulfill myriad public needs.

Retail does not have to be excluded entirely, despite the collapse of the Related Companies proposal in the City Council. The beauty of the Armory’s half-a-million square feet is that it can accommodate so many critical community uses like recreation, entertainment, job training, small business incubator and youth development. Stores can be part of the mix, too. Many of these ideas have been on the community’s drawing board for years.

There have been many Kingsbridge Armory task forces throughout the years, and this one has no real authority aside from the bully pulpit. But maybe that’s a good thing.

The recent task force created by the city’s Economic Development Corporation didn’t have any power, either, and it had to conform to the city’s limited concept of what the Armory could be.

The city may not be in the mood to listen right now after suffering the defeat of its mega-mall plan. But if it takes this responsibility seriously, Diaz’s task force can devise a bold, detailed, sustainable proposal that will make the Bloomberg administration pay attention.